Ethical Issues in Psychology

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Dr. Stephanie Goodwin is affiliated with Wright State University. Social cognitive theory has led her to research the cost of how attributing ostracism to racism changes recovery times. The participants were older adults African American and white. They played an online game called cyber-bal. Participants were ask to give information on age, gender, and ethnic origin. They were then told they would be playing with two other players in reality there were no other players. The participants saw on the computer game either two black or two white avatars representing the other players in the game. The participants were then either accepted or ostracized by the other players. After the game participants were ask to fill out a questionnaire answering questions about how much they had the ball, was the game fair exedra. They were then ask to give their level of distress during and after the game. The findings were that white participants felt ostracism was attributed to race only when the other players were black (Goodwin, Williams, & Carter-Sowell, 2010). Black participants related ostracism to race when the other players were black or white. This suggest blacks also experience racism among other blacks (Goodwin, Williams, & Carter-Sowell, 2010). Participants said being ostracized from the caused them distress and they had a longer recovery time due to the racial prejudice (Goodwin, Williams, & Carter-Sowell, 2010). This study is important because it shows that any form ostracism is painful and causes negative reactions.

It is important to understand culture when choosing a research method involving human participants. The researcher must be sure the method will not result in bias due to cultural difference. Different cultures have different perspectives on issues and relationship and so a study must take this into consideration when deciding on a method of research (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2013). To get accurate results the researcher has to know the culture to guard against imposing their own cultural perspective on the findings.

Researchers in social psychology use different theory to base their research on such as evolutionary, socio-cultural, behavioral/social learning, phenomenological, and social cognitive perspectives. Each perspective promotes psychologist to discover new hypothesis to test discovering answers for social issues and how individual behaviors are influenced by their social group.

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References

Aronson, E., Wilson, T., & Akert, R. M. (2013). Social Psychology (8th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson.

Becker, D. V., Mortensen, C. R., Ackerman, J. M., Shapiro, J. R., Anderson, U. S., Sasaki, T., Maner, J. K., Neuberg, S. L., & Kenrick, D. T. (2011). Signal Detection on the Battlefield: Priming Self Protection vs Revenge Mindedness Differentially Modulates the Detection of Enemies and Allies. PLoS One, 6(9), 1-5. doi:10.1371/Journal pone 0023929

Goodwin, S., Williams, K., & Carter-Sowell, A. R. (2010). The Psychological Sting of Stigma: The Cost of Attributing Ostracism to Racism. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 46(4), 612-618. doi:10.1016./jesp.2010.02.002

Jones, A., & Buckingham, J. T. (2005). Self-Esteem as a Moderator of the Effect of Social Comparisons on Women’s Body Image. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 24(9), 1164-1187.

Shteynberg, G. (October 2010). A Silent Emergence of Culture: The Social Tuning Effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(4), 683-689. doi:10.1037/a0019573

Spaten, O. M., Byrialsen, M. N., & Langdridge, D. (October 2011). Men’s Grief, Meaning, and Growth: A Phenomenological Investigation into the Experience of Loss.. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 11(2), 1-15. doi:10.2989/ipjp2011.11.2.4.1163